Structural model of self-care of patients with type-2 diabetes based on emotional symptoms, and spirituality: The mediating role of self-compassion

Diabetes is a chronic, growing disease with serious and important physical and mental consequences. Self-care is very important in controlling this disease, and identifying factors affecting self-care such as emotional symptoms, spirituality, and self-compassion can help us better control this type of disease. A review of the research background shows that there are few studies in the field of type 2 diabetes self-care, so the present study tries to investigate the role of self-compassion on diabetes self-care through emotional symptoms and spirituality.

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the structural model of the self-care relationship of patients with type 2 diabetes based on emotional symptoms and spirituality with the mediation of self-compassion.

The design of the current research was descriptive-correlational and structural equation modeling. The statistical population of the study included all patients with type 2 diabetes in Tehran in 2020-2021, 423 of whom were selected from Shariati, imam Khomeini hospitals, and Taban specialized health and diabetes polyclinic using available sampling method. In order to collect data, type 2 diabetes self-care questionnaires (Neamatizade et al., 2022), emotional symptoms (Wardenaar et al., 2010), self-compassion (Neff, 2003) and spirituality (Parsian & Dunning, 2009) were used. Also, research data were analyzed using structural equation modeling method and SPSS24 and AMOS24 software.

The findings of this research showed that the overall effect of emotional symptoms (β=0.274, P<0.01), spirituality (β=0.485, P<0.01) and self-compassion (P<0.01, 369) β=0/0) on self-care of type 2 diabetic patients was significant at the level of 0.01. Also, the results showed the indirect effect of emotional symptoms (β=-0.164, P < 0.01), spirituality (β = 0.098, P < 0.01) on the self-care of type 2 diabetic patients was significant at the level of 0.01. Based on this, it was found that self-compassion mediates the effect of emotional symptoms on self-care in a negative way and the effect of spirituality on self-care of diabetic patients in a positive and meaningful way. Also, the results showed that the variables of spirituality, emotional symptoms and self-compassion explain a total of 51% of the variance of self-care in type 2 diabetes patients.

According to the obtained results, it seems that self-compassion has a mediating role in the relationship between emotional symptoms and spirituality and self-care of type 2 diabetes patients. Therefore, increasing self-compassion in these patients can be effective in improving the self-care of these patients by controlling negative emotional symptoms such as depression and anxiety and increasing spirituality.